"Odysseus--soldier, sailor, trickster, and everyman--is one of the most recognizable characters in world literature. His arduous, ten-year journey home after the Trojan War, the subject of Homer's Odyssey, is the most accessible tale to survive from ancient Greece, and its impact is still felt today across many different cultures. This lively free verse translation, from one of today's leading Homeric scholars, preserves the clarity and simplicity...

Dadi is the grandmother, or, as she explains, the "manager" of an extended family living in the Haryana region of Northern India. Women here leave their natal villages and come as strangers to the households of their husband's parents. This film explores the extended family and its problems, particularly through the women of Dadi's family. Going by the age-old Indian belief that the larger the family the more the hands to help, Dadi runs her household...

The Ancient Mariners follows nautical archaeologists as they excavate three shipwrecks in the depths of the Eastern Mediterranean and as they analyze their finds in the laboratory. The three ships, dating from before 300 B.C. to 1025 A.D., tell the story of a significant change in the methods of ship construction - a change reflecting broader alterations in social, economic, and political conditions. Distributed by PBS Distribution.

Who were the first Americans, and when did they arrive? Archaeologists from Texas to Alaska share their search for answers, based on evidence that the first Americans may have arrived 20,000 to 30,000 years ago. The controversial origin of Clovis Man and the Stone Age culture of New Mexico, circa 11,000 B.C., provoke debate: was this culture developed within a preexisting population or brought via the Bering Strait land bridge from Asia? Distributed...

On the Indonesian island of Bali, the arts permeate almost every aspect of daily life - attempts to please the gods and placate demons. Much of human effort is directed toward these attempts, and the pinnacle of such efforts is the ritual Eka Dasa Rudra, held once every hundred years and involving the entire population of the island. There is also a political dimension to Eka Dasa Rudra. In 1963, upon the urging of then-President Sukarno, Balinese...

Featuring the work of famed microcinematographer Lennart Nilsson, The unknown world reveals the varieties of microorganisms that exist undetected in the daily lives of humans.

It is said that every road movie and novel about a defining journey owes a debt to the Odyssey. This imaginative program uses the poem's division into groupings of books as a framework to allow Dr. Tom Winnifrith, of Warwick University; Dr. Douglas Cairns, of Leeds University; and Ken Dowden, senior lecturer at Birmingham University, to analyze the oral tradition and key elements of the story line. Readings and dramatizations from the Odyssey enhance...

The crew must decide whether to continue their mission to Pluto,where they plan to build a space telescope to probe the far reaches of the Universe, and to look for other planets that might sustain life. Before returning home though, Pegasus has one last objective, to investigate a comet for signs of life, as comets are thought to carry the building blocks of life. But the last exploration of the mission might also be their last as, quite suddenly,...

Having escaped from the Cyclops, the Greeks are made welcome by Aeolus, King of the Winds, who gives Odysseus a bag of winds that would otherwise blow him off course. Within sight of Ithaca and overcome by distrust, his men open the bag to see what treasures Odysseus is hiding. The ensuing storm takes them to the Island of Circe, the sorceress who drugs men and turns them into swine. Through the intervention of Hermes, messenger of the gods, Odysseus...